Starbucks is closing stores.
Now there’s a line that would have been unthinkable from the 1990s and into the ‘teens. Some 30 years ago, when Jerry Seinfeld was still doing standup, he cracked that he noticed a new Starbucks had opened in his neighborhood. It was inside another Starbucks.
So many Starbucks were popping up around the country — around the world — that it seemed they were growing inside each other, like scifi Aliens.
That was then; this is now.
We can speculate any number of reasons for the store closings. Union busting, coffee tariffs, a corporate mid-life crisis, and even the spread of local, independent coffee houses. Take your pick. Or mash them all together. No matter. Starbucks is no longer growing.
It is shrinking.
The only sure thing we can conclude is nothing ever lasts. Especially not in this throwaway consumer culture.
What else, what other erstwhile rock solid thing that we hold dear and dependable will go poof any time soon?
A lot of us are scared to death that democracy itself is teetering, thanks to the Resurrection of Li’l Duce. (And, by the way, I’ve come up with another nickname for the Crazy-Commander-in-Chief: Caligu-lite. I like this one almost as much as Li’l Duce.)
Democracy! Hell, our whole American identity is based on the idea of democracy (even if, throughout our history, it has rarely been practiced in a truly comprehensive democratic manner). The rise of an emotionally crippled, morally bankrupt, psychologically stunted greed monkey has indeed put our aspirational better angel in mortal peril.
If we stick to corporate powerhouses that have vanished or become mere shadows of their former selves, we can cite Sears, Blockbuster, Radio Shack, Lehman Brothers, Pan Am, Bethlehem Steel, Woolworth’s, Kodak, and a few dozen more.
And how about empires, real actual political, geographical realms? Caligula’s Rome is now just a place where American tourists go to see St. Peter’s and sample authentic Italian cooking. Ancient Greece is a driving tour of crumbling architectural ruins. Ancient Egypt is a few pyramids and the Sphinx. Genghis Khan’s Mongol Empire was the greatest, in terms of land area, in the history of the world — it lasted just shy of a hundred years. The British Empire now is just another tourist trap, monetizing Americans’ bizarre fixation on its outdated, interbred royalty.
All empires die.
While we’re fretting over the possible demise of our own empire — even if we liked to think of it as a shining city on a hill — we might also take heart in the possibility that the Reign of Caligu-lite can, like every other empire or wannabe realm, implode.
Fingers crossed.